Flying Bullets Have Neighbors in Fear

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The front doors of a Winthrop Avenue home are boarded up since bullets came flying through the glass and in through the home a few weeks ago.

"My wife was here and said it was very scary. She said, maybe like 15 shots, and I saw the holes in the house, holes right over the baby's crib, right through the walls, two, three walls," Vin Smith, who lives next door, said.

Smith said the bullets barely missed the toddler and infant who live there. Their mother still fears for their safety and didn't want to go on camera.

However, she said she had warned the landlord that something like this could happen. Neighbors suspect the gunfire was intended for another tenant of the multi-family house, who is allegedly involved in illegal activity.

"Lot of dealers, prostitution, the neighborhood is just going down. There's a lot of people working on it, but police can't seem to get a handle on it. Every once in a while, it seems to blow up again," Smith said.

That's why Smith is moving out, so are the mother and her two children. Her landlord has failed to keep her safe, she said.

Many resident of the neighborhood agree that the violence has gotten out of hand, but they also said landlords can't bear all the responsibility.

"If a landlord can't track everyone that's in their building. -- they can rent it out, and then if they have other people coming in and selling drugs and stuff, it's not all on the landlord. It's also the people in the building that have to let the landlord know these people in here are selling drugs," Constance Middleton, of New Haven, said.